Commuters (11 page)

But—but…everyone went to Waugatuck to swim. They just did; they always had. No one had their own pool—it would be so gauche, so ostentatious, so…
New
Hartfield.
Mom, you can’t just go around doing whatever you want in this town,
Rachel had sputtered.
Why on earth not?
Winnie had demanded.

Rachel winced. Her whole body felt sore and shaky. She considered the various ways to extricate herself from this situation.
Vikram was still squatting, his forearm resting on a knee, balancing with the fingertips of one hand on the floor. He wore shorts and a white Dartmouth T-shirt, and his face was puffy, a little creased.

“I woke you. I’m sorry—I didn’t think anyone was home.”

“My time zones are all mixed up. I flew in this morning from Jakarta, and I took a sleeping pill, so probably”—Vikram yawned, drowning himself out—“didn’t hear the doorbell.”

“No, you wouldn’t have. Listen, do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”

Vikram stuck his bottom lip out. “All right,” he said cautiously. “It’s not about my girlfriend, is it?”

“Your—? No. Why would it be about your girlfriend?”

Vikram rubbed his face and gave a boyish smile of relief. “You’d be surprised how many things are,” he said. “Am I still asleep? I need to have some tea. Could we, please—”

“Of course,” Rachel said, taking his hand and allowing him to help her up. He held Melissa’s door, so she went first, out into the hall and down the stairs. “I cannot go into the kitchen,” she said. “I just can’t.”

“I know,” Vikram said.

When he emerged with a tray, Rachel was sitting on one of the sectional pieces in her dining room, gazing at the photo of Ingrid Bergman.

“I must be the only person on the planet who hasn’t seen
Casablanca
,” she said. “We rented it once, years ago, and even then I was so far behind—Bob was always after me to see it, and everyone’s always, ‘How can you not have seen
Casablanca
?’ but it just never seemed like the right time—anyway, so then we finally rented it,
and the tape broke about fifteen minutes in. Now I figure it’s just my fate not to ever watch it. Thank you,” she said, about the mug of tea she’d been handed.

“Yours is herbal,” Vikram said, a bit pointedly. This struck Rachel as very funny. “My mother is a film professor,” he added.

“Wow,” Rachel said. “Back in India?”

“No, at UCLA.”

“Christ,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?”

“I just meant…I didn’t know you were from California, is all.”

“I grew up in Hoboken, and my mother moved to L.A. a few years ago, after my stepfather died. Does this have to do with the personal question?”

Rachel flushed. “Maybe I should go. This is all—pretty strange, for me. To be here.”

“You don’t have to,” Vikram said. “What were you going to ask me?”

“Well, okay. It has to do with money, and I just—you’re in business, right? I know Bob must have told me, but I forgot what it is you do, exactly—”

“I own a company that restructures other companies. Are you familiar with the energy industry?” She shook her head. “Right. Well, then that’s probably the best way to put it. Our primary market focus is South Asia.”

“That’s amazing—and you’re…what, not even thirty yet? No, never mind, just ignore that.” The tea was bitter, but its warmth had begun to restore Rachel. The throbbing behind her eyes eased, and the physical sense of being in this room—stupid
couches notwithstanding—was seeping into her as a slow, unfolding peace. How many meals had she served in here? How many times had she pushed open that swinging door with one hip, plates in hand, children clamoring at the table? These walls recognized her. They righted her.

“It’s just…here’s the thing. My mother, who lives in Hartfield too, recently remarried. Did you hear about all this? No, of course not. Well, her new husband is being sued by his own daughter. Her name is Annette; she’s this Chicago—”

“Suing because…she disapproves of the marriage? On what grounds?”

“Well, it started as a business dispute. Her father—that’s Jerry, Mom’s husband—owns this company and Annette has some executive position. I don’t know the specifics, but apparently there was a disagreement that couldn’t be sorted out, so now it’s become a legal issue.”

“Not that uncommon, unfortunately. In family businesses.” Vikram leaned back. “It’s too bad for everyone involved, of course.”

“Well, now it’s getting more personal,” Rachel said. “Last week, Jerry called and asked if he could tell me something, in confidence. I said, fine. He says that Annette has filed a lien on the house, this house that they really shouldn’t have bought at their ages…but anyway. The daughter now has the lawyers arguing that this house my mother is living in is company property and actually part of the dispute and could be—”

“Why would it be company property?”

“Because Jerry bought it in cash. That he liquidated from company assets.”

“Ah,” Vikram said. “And I assume we’re not talking about an insignificant…”

“Two point four million dollars,” Rachel blurted. And that felt good, like cursing.

Vikram let out a low whistle. “I didn’t know Hartfield had properties in that range—unless, is it one of those newer developments? By the school?”

“No, no. It’s on Greenham Avenue. One of the oldest houses in town. You can barely see it from the road, since there’s so much wooded area in front. I mean, on Chicago’s North Shore this place wouldn’t raise an eyebrow, but here in Hartfield—well, everybody knows about this house.”

“It sounds grand. But I don’t quite…why are you telling me this?”

Rachel set her mug on the sharp-edged glass coffee table. “It’s stupid, I guess. My mother doesn’t even know I know about this, and now she has this wild idea about putting in a
swimming pool
…and everything anyone says only gets her mind more set on it. But now with this lien on the house—doing anything like that would be, just, a bad idea, to say the least. Right?”

Vikram opened his mouth to respond, but Rachel went on. “And if I say anything about it, she’ll know I know. She’s not thinking clearly. Maybe that’s why Jerry called me.” She stopped. Actually, why
was
Jerry confiding in her? Maybe he saw her as a substitute for Annette. The idea made Rachel—well aware of her lack of business acumen—nervous. Aside from the matter of her loans, Rachel had thought that she and Jerry were striking up some kind of friendship.

“Anyway, my mother has this ridiculous conviction that all of
his money doesn’t matter. I mean, I don’t even think she
thinks
about it, how much the house actually costs. Not that she’s accustomed to it or even feels entitled, really…but it’s weird, isn’t it? To practically ignore the fact that Jerry has this incredible wealth? No one in our family has anything like it. No one we
know
does—Hartfield’s just not that kind of place!”

Where was Vikram going? He had wandered away during this, into the foyer and back.

“Is this your mother?” He was holding up a copy of the local paper.

Rachel sighed. “It sure is.” The article about the debacle at the photography exhibit had mercifully limited its coverage of the protestors—
Editors know these guys only want attention
, Bob had said—but had included an unflattering photo of Winnie, frowning and in mid-sentence at the podium, with the caption, “Derailed! Local resident and exhibit participant Winifred (Easton) Trevis faces tough questions about historic tree on her property.” Winnie herself was laughing about it only the next day and had agreed to be interviewed by Melissa for a social studies paper on the event.

Vikram raised his eyebrows, reading silently. Rachel was surprised he even took the
Bugle
. What could he really care about in our town? she asked herself. Why
did
he choose to live all the way out here, anyway, all by himself? From there, it was only a short, inevitable step to
Who
is
this man, barefoot and proprietary, making me tea in my own house on a Thursday afternoon?

“Jerry seems to think she should stay out of it, my mother. But don’t you think she needs to be clear on what’s at stake? I mean, at least she should know what she’s getting into. Not just float along with this whole
love-is-all-you-need
attitude.”

Vikram looked up quizzically. “Why?”

“Because—because it’s not realistic. And because other people are involved.”

“What does her husband—what does Jerry think? About this pool? Does he want it badly enough to face the possible consequences?”

Rachel started to speak, and then stopped. “Actually, I have no idea. She says it’s for his back pain, but as far as I know, he hasn’t spoken a word about this whole pool project, one way or another.”

“Well. It sounds as if there’s not much your mother could do, in any case, even if she did know about the lien. That’s what lawyers are for.” Vikram checked his watch—or his bare arm, anyway, rubbing at where his watch would be.

Rachel knew she had to go, but felt that something urgent needed to be clarified. “But how do you think it would
look
? To you, as an outsider. Not an
outsider
, but—you know what I mean. A brand-new pool, two old people—I mean, how much use would it get, anyway? Doesn’t it seem strange?”

Vikram waited for a moment before answering. “It’s impossible for me to say,” he said, not unkindly. And he held the door for her, as she gathered the witch costume for Melissa. She slid her clogs back on.

“Thank you for the tea. I’m sorry I bothered you.” Rachel wished she had sunglasses to put on.

“Mrs. Brigham—”

“Rachel, please.”

“Rachel. If you need to come in sometimes, just let me know. I am not unaware of the difficulties you must face—with our…situation.” Vikram waved his hand back and forth between the
sides of the house—
yours, mine.
“And that it can be hard for the rest of your family too.”

“Why? Have the girls—I’m sorry about Melissa leaving her bike in front. We talked to her about that.”

“I’m talking about your husband. He was over, one time, not too long ago.”

“Bob? What did he do? What did he want?”

“He didn’t do anything, really. He had asked if he could just look around, and he said it had something to do with his writing, but I think what he wanted was simply to be here for a little while. He stood quietly in the room there for a few minutes, and then he just thanked me and left.”

“Mondays are brilliant,” Nona said.

“I know.” Avery took her hand and put it in his pocket. “You’re off, I’m off…and everyone else is stuck in the office. Writing their little e-mails, reading their little e-mails.”

“Everyone else?”

“Suckers. Sad sacks. Soul sellers.”

Nona rolled a piece of candy from one side of her mouth to the other. It drove him crazy when she did that. She tucked it in her cheek and asked, “What do you know about working in an office, anyway?”

“I know it fucking blows, that’s what. What do
you
know about it?”

“I’ve done time in all sorts of places. Plus, and this might be news to you—I’m no spring chicken.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed.” Nona stuck out her tongue. The inside of her mouth was stained dark purple. “So then, where’ve you worked, Office Girl?”

In response she only stretched, arcing her joined hands high
enough behind her head to elicit a series of little pops and cracks from her back. He watched her gaze at a garbage truck rumbling past, and how the truck doubled and mirrored itself in her sunglasses. They were huddled in a doorway, trying to stay out of the wind. “Where
is
that guy?” Nona said, stomping her feet.

Avery immediately shrugged off his jacket.

“No, no.”

“Shut up.” He bundled her up like a little kid. It sent a thrill through him, the way she was instantly dwarfed inside his coat. Nona pulled her hair free from the collar. Long, ratty dreads and braids splayed across the fleece shoulders, and Avery had to restrain himself from tugging at one. Or biting it.

They were on Myrtle Avenue, standing across the street from the bare, padlocked Blue Apple Diner, in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn. Although gentrification had worked its way through this historic African-American neighborhood years ago—its brownstones revived and resold, cafés and bars full of monied hipsters (a lot like Avery, he had to admit) pushing out the older, original residents—none of that had made it to this stretch of Myrtle, a few blocks north of Fort Greene Park and the looming brick towers of the Wentworth Housing Project. Avery knew that in their demos, the rapper kids from Wentworth called it “Murder Ave.” What had been the Blue Apple Diner was the ninth space he had looked at, and the first one he wanted Nona to see too. They had already tried to peer through the soaped windows, and Avery had gone on and on about how little it would take to pull down the old overhanging sign and tear off that nasty, ancient fake-wood trim running along the front. Stripped down, minimal, clean—that would be his look. (At the last minute, he’d avoided saying the
word
vision
.) Nona had listened quietly, eyes roaming the street, the scene.

“Anyway, the foot-traffic thing?” he said now, bouncing up and down a little to distract himself from the cold. “Whatever. It’s a destination, a place people go to for a reason. Not some place they’re just strolling by and stop in to eat a three-hour dinner.”

“Some people are already strolling by,” Nona said. Across the street, an older black woman slowly wheeled a shopping cart full of garbage bags. They both watched as she paused to hawk a glob of spit into the entranceway of the Blue Apple Diner and then continue on her way. Avery sighed.

“This is the guy,” he said, a minute later. A squat, dusty brown car had double-parked outside the restaurant, and Ricardo got out. He was in his mid-forties, with a black leather jacket and complicated, precisely shaved facial hair. They crossed the street to where he was unlocking the metal grate in front of the diner, cell phone wedged between ear and shoulder. He shook Avery’s hand and held the door open for Nona, motioning them inside.

“If it says, ‘in person,’ then it means
in person
,” Ricardo was saying into the phone. “Otherwise, what the fuck?” He crossed the room ahead of them and switched on the lights. Avery half wished he wouldn’t.

“How much?” Nona asked. Fluorescent panels above them buzzed and flickered, greenish white. A long orange counter ran the length of the room, though where the stools had been was now a row of broken holes in the dingy tile. But the tables were still here, six or so four-tops with flimsy metal legs. Beat-up chairs were scattered around, some knocked over backward, a few set upside down on the tabletops.

“Sixty-five hundred,” Avery admitted, kicking aside a crumpled paper bag. “Plus two months’ deposit.”

“A bargain, then,” Nona said.

“Okay, but you’re seeing the worst of it. So, all this comes out. I pull up the tile and redo the floors. That’s first. Then, the bar. Knock this out”—Avery tugged on the orange countertop and it came away from its base easily—“which won’t be too hard, obviously.” He pounded it back into place with a glance toward Ricardo, just outside. “What else? Oh, the bathroom. Yeah, don’t go in there.”

“Roger that.”

“But check this out—here’s where it all comes together.” He tugged Nona around the back of the bar and into the kitchen. She turned in a slow circle, taking in the stained range, uneven shelving, and the walk-in refrigerator, but Avery could tell she wasn’t getting it.
Walk-in fridge!

“No diner has a kitchen like this, first of all. They have a big goddamn griddle and a couple toasters! Two ovens? You can roast four chickens at once in these! You don’t need these for anyone’s basic fucking fry-up. This guy told me there was another place here, before the diner. Some kind of soul-food joint, in the eighties. It’s all been sitting here since then. Probably untouched.”

Nona had wandered over to the six-burner stove and reached out to touch something Avery hadn’t noticed—a tiny, dark wood frame nailed directly into the wall, eye level. It displayed a worn dollar bill with 1999 scribbled across the front in black marker.

“Another thing: all this stuff is already
here
.”

Nona didn’t say anything. Avery felt frustrated, talking to her back.

“Did you hear me?”

“I heard you. Is that unusual?”

“
Yeah,
it’s unusual. Any other place, we’d be looking at empty holes in the wall, hookups for gas and electricity. This all comes with. I mean, it’s not TV-chef shit or anything, but it’s another ten or twelve grand I don’t have to lay out.”

“So, what happened?”

“Well, Ricardo just said yeah, it’s included. And if he doesn’t know what it’s worth, I’m not going to be the one to tell him.”

“No. What happened to this guy”—Nona flicked at the plastic covering the dollar bill—“Mr. Blue Apple.”

Avery shrugged. “He got behind on the rent.” He waited for her to respond. “I mean, yeah, it’s a risk. But the way I see it, the neighborhood’s not going to support a local place on a regular basis. It’s not really the brunch crowd out here. Coffee and eggs, even at a steady pace—say, forty covers—that’s not going to be enough.”

Nona turned to him and nodded, but in an annoyingly vague kind of way, Avery thought. “Are you getting hungry?” she said.

“The difference is, with a twenty-dollar entrée, there’s less pressure to get people in the door all day long. And like I said, it’s a destination thing.” Avery knew he sounded neither clear nor convincing, even to himself, but it was distressing to see her just wander out to the front again. He was suddenly exhausted, and just stood there for a while, in the musty back area near the john—whatever that god-awful swampy smell was, he just didn’t want to know—watching Nona, back out on the street. She was still wearing his jacket. She was saying something to Ricardo, who now got all attentive and serious, in a way he never had been with Avery.

Men did this around Nona. Never once in his life had Avery cared about other guys checking out his girlfriends—back in Chicago, to be fair, he’d often been so high he probably wouldn’t even have noticed—but now he found himself seething at the way men bent to listen to Nona, putting their nasty heads down too close to her face. She drew initial looks, double-takes, because of her style—the mass of dreads, the off-kilter outfits, like today’s: baggy brown wool pants and splatter-painted sneakers—and Avery might have been okay with that had it not usually led to the kind of riveted, impressed attention that Ricardo was displaying now, whenever Nona began to speak. (Why did she have to
speak
so much? To anyone other than Avery, that is?)

He shut the lights off, and instantly the details of the broken, squalid room disappeared. “What’s up?” Avery said, pushing out the door to join them.

“You got my number, kid,” Ricardo said. “But I wouldn’t sit on it too long, all right? Couple other guys are interested. And another thing,” he said, moving past Nona to yank down the grate. “You call me again, it’s to sign the lease. I’m not hauling out here to ‘Gangland’ again for shits and giggles. Not that the company isn’t a pleasure”—this with a grin at Nona. Then he padlocked the chain, slammed into his car, and drove off. They watched him do a sharp U-turn on Myrtle and roar past them, heading south for the exits to the bridges.

“I can’t get on the train unless we eat,” Nona said, smiling. “I’ll pass out. And I told Henri I’d be at the studio by four, so…” She zigzagged her body to and fro, east and west. “Which way?”

“So, what were you two talking about?”

“What?”

“With that guy. Ricardo. You guys were pretty chatty out here.” Avery heard himself, and hated himself, but couldn’t stop. Hearing for the first time that she had plans for later in the day—plans that didn’t include him—tipped the scales, and now he slid into helpless, half-pleasurable self-pity.

“‘Chatty’? Well, yes, we were
chatting
. Quite a bit, in fact, while you finished your tour. Give me a minute.” Nona shut her eyes and put a couple fingers to her forehead. “I’ll see if I can reconstruct the exact conversation for you. Line by line.”

“Whatever.”

“Really? Is this a jealousy thing? Right. Sorry—I’m supposed to be flattered now.”

“I just don’t get why you’d rather stand around and talk to that douche bag about whatever—”

“Avery. Cut the shit. I hardly think a two-minute discussion about Staten Island merits the third degree.” Nona cocked her head and smiled, offering a chance for Avery to get reasonable and call it quits.

“Why the fuck were you talking about Staten Island?” he said flatly. “What, does he have some other overpriced shit-hole out there I should go visit?”

“We were talking about Staten Island because he fucking
lives
in Staten Island. And because I was making polite small talk with your friendly slumlord so that you could have a fucking minute in there alone to figure it out. Jesus.” Nona stalked up the street, and Avery followed. He was fairly sure she didn’t know where she was going. For a little while, they did nothing
but walk fast and furious up Myrtle Avenue, Avery a few feet behind Nona.

“Come on,” he called up to her. She didn’t stop. “Could you just fucking hold on, for a minute?”

In response, Nona threw a hand backward in a kind of get-lost wave.

“Why are you being such a bitch?”

That did it.

Nona wheeled around, unzipped Avery’s jacket, and let it drop to the ground. She laughed a little, not in a good way. “What do you want from me? I’m not your mommy, Avery. I’m not your little trust-fund manager. What, I’m supposed to jump up and down because you suddenly get a whim about wild salmon in the ghetto? Grow up.”

“I don’t have a trust fund!” Avery exclaimed. And instantly thought,
Do I?

“What would
you
be risking? What are the stakes? When some of us ‘get behind on the rent,’ we don’t tap some suburban nest egg and merrily go along our way.”

“Is that what this is about? That my family has money?”

“See, when you say that, with your face all
I can’t believe it
—it’s like, oh, what a petty little thing for her to bring up. That’s exactly the point.”

“I didn’t make a face like that.”

“My
mother
worked in an office. She was a secretary at a law firm in Pittsburgh for twenty-five years. When her first boss retired, she got a new boss, younger than I was—and the same desk, same paycheck, same hour-and-a-half commute. Okay?”

“Okay,” Avery said. Music came thumping faintly inside a
basement-level church nearby. An older man, leaning on a crumbled brick railing, watched them with obvious interest. “Well, you never told me that before.”

Nona shook her head. She was standing on his jacket, looking unhappy and cold. “See? You don’t even—Forget it.”

“But you just stood there and looked at all of it and didn’t say anything!” Avery said in a rush. “I don’t get it! Are you pissed at me, or something?”

“What did you think I’d say?”

“I thought you’d show some fucking
interest
, for one thing.”

The man on the stoop sucked his teeth loudly. “Better watch it, boy.”

Nona whirled to face him. “Is there any place to eat around here?”

The man took his time, thinking it over.

“Come on,” Avery said. “Can we just—”

“McDonald’s over on Willoughby.”

“That’s—that way, right?”

Avery tried to put his hand on her arm. “Nona, please. You don’t want McDonald’s.”

“
You don’t get to say what I eat!
” She took off around the corner.

“Thanks a lot, man,” Avery called to the oldster on the stairs, bending down to grab his jacket. A smashed, half-eaten donut was stuck to one arm.

“I ain’t said nothing ’bout nothing.” The man chuckled as Avery ran past him.

He pounded down the street, and what flashed through his head, randomly, was Winnie and that crazy-ass pool she wanted to plant right smack in their front yard. The stubborn, don’t-give-
a-shit look he’d seen on her face each time one of the contractors tried to argue with her. Wrong place, bad idea, too close to the house? She didn’t care. Axe some mammoth tree standing in her way? Fine. Just get it done.
That
was what he should be like, with the restaurant. It was pretty embarrassing to find himself wishing for the mental attributes of some eighty-year-old lady, but there you have it, Avery thought.